James Potter's Bad Hair Day
by JaneGrey9days
Summary: James Potter's hair is his most prized feature; he loves it, the girls love it and, secretly, Lily loves it too but what could happen after a nasty fight between James and Lily? How far is James really willing to go for Lily to like him?


_Hey! This is my first story and I really hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it._

_ JaneGrey9days._

**Disclaimer: I do not own/did not write Harry Potter****, that honour belongs to the amazingly talented J.K. Rowling**

James Potter's bad hair day.

"James Potter! If you don't leave me alone I will hex you into a pile of goo!" Lily shouted, glaring at a grinning James.

Merlin he was so _irritating_. Why did he have to like _her? _What had she done that had been so bad that she deserved to be stalked by _him?_ Although, to tell the truth, it wasn't as bad as before, in fact it was rather...No, no it was _not_ enjoyable.

"Aww, come on Evans, you know like it really." He drawled, ruffling his carefully mussed hair and grinning even wider.

"No I don't!" She snapped as he ruffled his hair again.

She wished he would stop doing that, the arrogant git, he wasn't even good looking.

Okay, that was a lie. He was good looking, very good looking, probably the best looking boy in the entire school if she was honest, with his hazel eyes that glinted with mischief and that cheeky smile and that _hair_. Oh Merlin, she would love to just reach up and run her hands through those silky, raven black locks and mess them up even more and after she'd done that he would lean down and look deep into her eyes and...

No! No! Bad Lily! Bad!

"I can't believe I just thought that!" She gasped, forgetting that the noisiest idiot in school, and the reason for the thought, was standing right next to her.

"Thought what Evans? Thought what?" James looked at her as though she'd gone mad before grinning cockily again and leaning in closer, Merlin he smelt good, to whisper seductively in her ear.

"Were you thinking about kissing me Evans? Can't say I blame you."

Lily felt a blush spreading across her cheeks and the tips of her ears. He was way too close to the mark, she wouldn't have been surprised if it turned out that James had put that that thought in her head using some sneaky spell he'd invented.

Scratch that, Lily was sure that that was exactly what he'd done.

"I wasn't thinking about anything and if I was it's none of your business." She paused, distracted slightly, as James ran his hand through his hair _again._

"Will you stop _doing _that!" She hissed.

He froze mid ruffle.

"Doing what?" He asked, confused.

Lily cursed silently. How could he not realize what he was doing? He ruffled his hair every two seconds for Merlin's sake!

"Running your hand through your hair!" She snarled. "You do it all the time and it just makes it look even worse, not that that should even be possible! I mean, your hair looks like a rat's nest on a good day and uh! I can't even describe what it looks like on a bad day!

You ruffling your hair every 2 seconds to make it look windswept just shows what an arrogant, conceited, self-centred git you are!"

Lily breathed deeply when she finished her, somewhat undeserved, rant and stood, fists clenched, glaring at James, waiting for his usual cocky reply. Which she didn't get.

As she had ranted on and on about his hair James had slowly removed his hand from his hair and let it drop to his side, the usual glint in his eyes has dulled and then gone out completely and his lazy grin had faded, leaving him with a slightly open mouth that he didn't bother to close. He looked stunned, as though Lily had been hitting him with a beater's bat and not just shouting at him.

Worse still was that way when he finally snapped out of his daze he looked at her with an expression Lily had never seen on his face before; hurt.

"You really mean what you said?" He asked in an unusually quiet voice.

"Mean what?" It came out harsher than she had intended and she saw James flinch slightly.

"That you don't like my hair and that you think I'm an arrogant git, did you really mean that?" There was what seemed to be a hint of desperation in his still quiet voice.

"Of course I meant what I said, idiot! Your hair is disgusting." Lily snorted slightly as she said this and continued in a patronizing tone. "You should shave it off; you would look slightly less ugly."

_What am I saying? _Lily wondered, _I don't even mean anything I'm saying and he didn't do anything to deserve me shouting at him._

"Oh, right. Well. I've got to..."

His voice was even quieter this time and he wouldn't meet her eye.

Suddenly he turned on his heel and started walking back up the stairs they had just walked down.

"Wait!" Lily shouted. "Were are you going? Breakfast's going to finish soon."

"Oh, I just realised that I've forgotten something in the common room and McGonagall will kill me if I don't hand I my essay."

He turned round as he said this, his voice stronger and his cocky smirk back in place although Lily could tell it was weak and forced. With an explanation given James started walking even faster, almost running into a suit of armour and walking into a door as though he couldn't see where he was going.

Lily watched him go feeling irritated that he was ignoring her and more than a bit guilt. _Well, no use worrying,_ she thought to herself_, he'll be back to his usual obnoxious self tomorrow. _

She was just about to continue making her way to the Great Hall when she realised something.

"Wait James! Wait! Gryffindor Tower is the other way!"

James didn't even look back.

...

James didn't come down to breakfast and Lily did have any classes with him in the morning so she didn't expect to see him again until lunch.

She had thought about what she'd said and she still didn't know why she'd been so harsh, she guessed it was because he had guessed that she had been thinking about kissing him, something she had vowed never to think of again.

Whatever the reason, she had decided that she would apologise to him at lunch.

Only he wasn't there. She walked up and down the table on both sides to make sure before accepting that he was probably off practicing Quiddich or flirting with some girl who had thrown herself at him.

She kept thinking that this was the case until she caught sight of Lupin and Sirius entering the Hall with Peter dancing along behind them.

Normally Lupin, Sirius and James were inseparable; if James wanted to practice Quiddich Sirius and Lupin would sit in the stands and watch, if Lupin wanted to study in the library they would all go and if Sirius wanted to cause trouble they would put their heads together and plot.

Because of their closeness Lupin and Sirius, knew of James' infatuation with Lily, everyone knew that he liked her just not _how_ much he actually liked her, and they both treated her accordingly; Sirius would abstain from flirting with her, or James would have killed him, and simply joked with her instead and Lupin would always smile at her when he passed and offered her to help her if she ever needed it.

It was because of this that it came as a shock to Lily, and the rest of the student body, when she saw that James was not with them and that, when they caught sight of Lily, instead of smiling and coming to sit near her as they normally did they glared at her and sat as far away as possible. They looked so angry that Lily decided that it probably wasn't the best idea to ask them where James was and it was probably a very good idea to leave before they decided to do something nasty. Apparently quite a few other students had the same idea.

Lily finally saw James in Transfiguration, her first class after lunch, where he arrived just as the bell rang and then proceeded to sit on the other side of the class room to her, something that he had _never_ done before.

His behaviour got even stranger as the day went on; he stayed silent in every class, not even making a trade mark cheeky remark when Sirius answered a question wrong, something that normally would have been followed with friendly teasing from the other marauders, all of whom stayed stonily silent.

This behaviour was so unusual that even the teachers noticed, indeed McGonagall, who was used to James showing off in her class, asked James if he was feeling ill, and Flitwick tried, rather desperately, to get James to make a joke about ten times during Charms. Even Binns seemed to notice; pausing to look up at James during his lecture as though he expected him to say something.

James', and the marauder's, strange behaviour worried Lily and she had a niggling feeling that she was the reason behind. This little niggle was reinforced by the fact that James was avoiding her; every time she tried to corner him and apologise he would suddenly vanish into the crowd.

In the end Lily gave up and went to bed feeling guilty, alone and confused

...

When Lily woke up the next morning she determined to apologise; James Potter was going to listen to her grovel whether he wanted to or not.

_Who said anything about grovelling?_ Said a little voice in her head. _All I want to do is apologise._

None of the marauders were at breakfast but Lily heard something that made her even more determined to find him during her free period; she was walking past a group of fifth year girls when she heard one of them sigh:

"Oh, James' _hair_, it was so _nice._"

Lily was so surprised by this sentence that she didn't hear the_ was._ Instead she span round and glared at the girls; how _dare_ they talk about her James' hair like that, she knew a lot of girls liked him but his hair was for her enjoyment alone and if anyone else so much as sighed about it she would curse them into next week.

_Hold it! Hold it!_ Said the voice in her head, which was beginning to sound annoyingly like James. _What are you talking about? James isn't yours and what's all this hair fetishing that's going on? It's kind of creepy and you said yourself you don't like his hair at all._

After she had told herself to shut, which earned her some weird looks, she set of back to the common room, too confused to eat anything. _Come to think of it why did that bi...that girl say _was?

She pushed through the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, which was weirdly quite. She looked around and saw that everyone was staring in one direction. Lily followed the gazes and she saw why the girl had been sighing over James' hair and why she had used the past tense to describe it.

James Potter was sitting in one of the armchairs by the fire his head buried in a book.

And he was completely _bald_.

Lily couldn't do anything thing other than gape at him, her mouth opening and closing silently like a fish's.

_His _hair._ What had he done to his _hair? _Gorgeous raven black locks, what had he _done?

"What have you _done_?" She finally managed to choke out.

He looked up at her from his book and tried to catch her eye but she just couldn't take her eyes off his head. His very _bald_ head.

"Oh, hey Evans! What do you mean 'What have I done?'? I followed your advice and shaved all my hair off. Do you like it?" He sounded rather desperate as he said the last bit and his eyes searched her face.

"Do I like it?" Echoed Lily, still too stunned to formulate her own sentence.

"Yes, do you like it?" James repeated.

"I...I" She stuttered before finding her voice, "YOU IDIOT! JAMES POTTER, I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU SHAVED YOU HEAD! HOW COULD YOU BE SO STUPID? I TOLD YOU TO SHAVE YOUR HAIR BECAUSE I WAS ANGRY, I DIDN'T MEAN FOR YOU TO ACTUALLY DO IT! OF ALL THE THINGS I SAY TO YOU, YOU CHOOSE THIS TO TAKE LITERALLY? OH MERLIN, YOU IDIOT!"

Lily was almost crying with frustration as screamed all of this at him and with each sentence she became more and more hysterical. She was just about to shout some more when she heard a snigger behind her. She span round, wanting to punch the person who was laughing a something so serious. It was Lupin.

She turned back to James only to see him laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his face.

"Merlin Evans," He gasped out as he laughed. "That was unexpected. Very amusing but also very unexpected. Ah, your reaction! Priceless!"

Lily stared at him, stunned.

"What are you talking about? Have you lost your sanity as well as your hair?" She hissed. "You should _not_ be laughing at this; this is serious!"

"Aww, I'm sorry Evans." Said James, trying to stop his laughter. "You don't have to worry; I still have all my hair, I haven't shaved it off or anything, I just wanted to see how you'd react. Very badly apparently."

"So you're telling me you still have your hair?"

"Every last strand, well not every last strand; Sirius accidently pulled some out yesterday." More sniggers from behind her.

"And pretended to be hurt and avoid me for a whole day just so you could pull a prank on me?" She said blackly.

"Yep!"

"I am going to kill you James Potter. I am going to kill you." Lily snarled as she slowly walked towards him. "But first.."

"But first what?" James gulped and back away, behind her the tittering stopped.

Without warning Lily reached out and grabbed James' head, pulled what was now obliviously a bald cap off his head and plunged her hands into the mess of that fell from it.

"Err, Evans. What are you doing" James asked nervously, bending slightly as she pulled his head closer.

"Oh shut up James. I've been wanting to do this forever and I thought I'd never get a chance to when I thought you'd shaved it off." Lily sighed happily as she continued to ruffle James' hair and completely ignoring the stares from the other Gryffindors in the common room.

"Okay...If you say so Evans."

"Oh, and James? You want to know what I was thinking about yesterday before I started shouting at you? This is what I was thinking about."

With that Lily pulled James' head closer to hers, her hands still ruffling his hair, so that their lips were almost touching. James suddenly realised what she was doing and his eyes lit up, he grinned and he leaned down and...

They didn't hear the cat calls or the wolf whistles; they were to wrapped up in each other.


End file.
